Letter from Birmingham Jail Quotes

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“It is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Very few people will rise to the heights of genius in the arts and the sciences; very few collectively will rise to certain professions. Most of us will have to be content to work in the fields and in the factories and on the streets. But we must see the dignity of all labor.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over...”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

“It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail